Bible Synapse
Was Ahaziah 22 or 42 when he became king?
Hard question · Israel’s history: Joshua to Esther · raised by 3 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign”.
Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel.
“Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign” (Hebrew, KJV and WEB; the BSB prints twenty-two).
Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name also was Athaliah the daughter of Omri.
His father Jehoram was thirty-two when he began to reign and reigned eight years, so he died at forty.
Thirty and two years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired. Howbeit they buried him in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings.
The objection
2 Kings 8:26 says that Ahaziah of Judah was twenty-two when he became king; 2 Chronicles 22:2, in the Hebrew and the KJV, says forty-two.
The answer
Forty-two must be a copyist’s slip, and Chronicles itself shows it. Ahaziah’s father Jehoram was thirty-two when he began to reign and reigned eight years (2 Chronicles 21:5, 20), so he died at forty. A son of forty-two would have been two years older than his father. Twenty-two fits: Jehoram was about eighteen when Ahaziah, his youngest son, was born (2 Chronicles 22:1). Several ancient versions of Chronicles avoid the impossible figure: the Syriac and Arabic read twenty-two, as do some copies of the Greek Septuagint, whose main text reads twenty. Keil and Delitzsch, Clarke and Gill all explain 42 as a slip, most likely between two Hebrew letters used as numerals, kaph (כ, twenty) and mem (מ, forty). Many modern translations, such as the BSB, print twenty-two in 2 Chronicles 22:2.
Other answers Christians give
The age of Omri’s house
Some older writers, following a Jewish chronology, took 42 as the age of the royal house of Omri, to which Ahaziah’s mother Athaliah belonged. Gill thought this an unusual way of reckoning with nothing to support it, and preferred the copyist explanation.
A joint reign
Kimchi and Abarbanel, as Gill reports, suggested that Ahaziah reigned with his father from twenty-two and alone from forty-two. That needs twenty years of shared rule, but Jehoram reigned only eight years, so this cannot work.
From the classic commentators
The statement in 2 Chronicles 22:2, that he was forty-two years old when he became king, rests upon a copyist's error, namely, a confusion of כ twenty with מ forty.Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 2 Kings 8
he could not have been forty-two, as stated here, without being two years older than his own father! See the note there. The Syriac and Arabic have twenty-two, and the Septuagint, in some copies, twenty.Adam Clarke, Commentary on 2 Chronicles 22 (1810–1826)
Sources
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 2 Kings 8, at Bible Hub
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on 2 Chronicles 22, at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: 2 Chronicles 22, at Bible Hub
- The Septuagint (Brenton’s Greek text), 2 Chronicles 22